


The Warrior Caste

by kishuku



Series: Time Waits for No One [1]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Gen, Graphic Descriptions of Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-13
Updated: 2020-08-13
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:28:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,333
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25885111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kishuku/pseuds/kishuku
Summary: Time rolls on and as much as things change somethings never change. In fact, some people never change.Fast forward three hundred years into the future and the group dynamics have changed. They're hit with another dream, another addition, and the first for Nile.
Relationships: Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova
Series: Time Waits for No One [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1878370
Comments: 16
Kudos: 92





	The Warrior Caste

A deadly earthquake nearly 60 years ago had split the infamous Mount Everest in half, shoving one half further up into the sky like a hungry fang, now officially over 9,000 meters above sea level, the other half now only the second highest point on the earth reaching up desperately to its twin. A sharp plunge split the two peaks, the two sheer walls facing off against each other while the wind careened wildly back and forth, a hungry ghost ready to fling careless climbers down into the empty maw. Some referred to the peaks as Hillary and Mallory, Western mountaineers who’d challenged Everest when it was once whole, but the locals renamed the peaks Chomo and Lungma, which together meant “Goddess of the Wind”.

In fact, the goddess’s wrath seemed to be screaming across the twin mountains at the moment in a blizzard of epic proportions. Visibility was zero, a complete whiteout dropping over the entire mountain, trapping climbers in their tents if they were lucky, trapping them in the Death Zone if they were not.

The Death Zone, above 8,000 meters, where the human body started to die from lack of oxygen despite how physically fit they were. The body needed so much energy just to stay warm; this high the body ceased to digest food and instead consumed fat and muscle in order to stay alive. The human body would eat itself alive at those altitudes and temperatures.

On the Nepal side of Chomo, ten men huddled together, slowly freezing to death, but too blind to move around without tumbling off the mountain to their deaths. One young man, the medic training with this Nepalese military team, whispered a prayer and an apology to his sister as he struggled to stay awake and alive.

~~

Avantika Khatri Chhetri was a lieutenant in the Nepalese military and was the best helicopter pilot alive on this side of the world. She was a young woman, not yet thirty, with dark serious eyes and short black hair cropped close to her skull at the nape. She had a light brown complexion, dusky pink lips, framed on either side with high cheekbones. Avantika paced nervously inside her room at the barracks, fully dressed in her flight uniform and ready to go. Everyone on the base knew a blizzard had come smashing down on Chomo and Lungma and that a military training group, as well as a handful of climbers, were trapped on the mountain top.

She was waiting for the authorities to call her to rescue. Avantika routinely was called to fly a small lightweight highly maneuverable helicopter for high altitude rescues, it wouldn’t be her first mission, but it would be the first time she may need to rescue someone she knew.

“KC Avantika!” Someone banged on her door. It was her co-pilot, an older man named Ravinder, he had his own ready pack slung over one shoulder.

Avantika grabbed her ready pack at her feet and yanked the door open, “Fucking finally.” She yanked her air filtration mask down over her face, Kathmandu had the world’s worst air pollution, and dashed out after him. Together they briskly jogged through the chill night air to the commandant’s office. There they received the orders Avantika had been waiting for all evening: Fly up the mountainside in the early morning darkness and bring down as many survivors from Camp One as possible. KC Avantika on controls.

The two pilots saluted the commandant, then raced out towards the airfield where a crew would have the helicopter ready and fueled.

Ravinder groused as they did pre-flight checks, “I am never going to be able to play hero as often as you do, KC.”

Avantika tossed him a cheeky grin, “The commandant trusts me. I’ve come back alive with my cargo every time so far!”

The flight to the CL Base Camp was rough to say the least, Avantika fighting the wind the entire way, her hands clenched, frozen, to the controls. Ravinder handled the radio. On their way out it had squawked: “Land at CL Base Camp. Winds too strong to attempt rescue.” Then just as they were approaching the base camp the radio sputtered and crackled again: “Winds died down. Attempt an approach to Camp One!”

Avantika nodded briskly to show she’d heard and came in low, skimming close to the Khumbu Icefall, the bright beams of the helicopter making the blue ice glow. The Khumbu Icefall was a frozen river that crawled down the Nepal side of Chomo—the taller of the two mountains that used to be Everest—and was the most dangerous section for mountaineers who’d survived a night in the Death Zone, a single mistake or misstep could send a man slipping and sliding down to his death. The icefall was difficult for a healthy man to navigate and impossible without functional hands or feet and sometimes climbers had such severe frostbite the descent was a death sentence.

A bright red flare waved at her from the ledge that was Camp One, a single brave soul stood near the precipice and signaled for her to land. They’d also marked the spot with a bright red splash of dye. Legend had it that the first pilot to land here had this very spot marked with red Kool-Aid. The ledge sat between two crevasses, their dark empty shadows penning in the narrow white snow covered ledge where she would land.

Avantika hovered the helicopter just above the ledge, allowing the downdraft from the propellers to blow off the snow before she landed the skids. The ledge creaked, the ice making tiny shrieks of protest against the weight of the machine. A group of four men carrying a bundle between them raced for the side door. Ravinder slammed open, popping the pressure seal, and slid the man-shaped package inside. Ravinder signaled for her to lift off again as he yanked the door closed.

When they landed in CL Base Camp Avantika yelled into her microphone: “Ravinder! You should get out!”

“Why?!” he demanded.

“I can’t carry more than three at a time or we’ll be too heavy for that ledge. If you stay here we can rescue more people!” she explained, a low level of anxiety thrumming through her. Time was running out, the sun was coming up. Once the sun was up the heat would make the air even thinner and she wouldn’t be able to make another run or she could crash into the side of the mountain.

Ravinder scowled but grabbed up things and jumped out after the injured climber. He stood and watched as Avantika lifted off again his face dark with anger and frustration.

When she landed a second time Avantika demanded, “How many more?” She didn’t dare move her eyes to look at the man, keeping her gaze fixed on the edge of the ledge as she listened to the sound of two more climbers being loaded.

The man on the ground who opened the door hollered back, “These two and one more.”

One more trip, then she could ask about her brother.

She checked her fuel just as she landed at Base Camp once more, 9 minutes of fuel. Just enough to make one last run. She didn’t want to waste time refueling.

Strained and exhausted, nerves as brittle as all the ice around her, Avantika lifted off one more time.

The sky was brightening and she could feel the change in the air as she climbed back up above the Khumbu Icefall. Last one, she promised herself.

The skids had almost touched down when a wind screamed down the side of the mountain, tilting the helicopter ever so slightly. Avantika felt the helicopter slip sideways and then come down on the ledge.

For a second, nothing happened. Then the ice screamed and the helicopter listed to the side. Avantika was thrown against her restraints hard enough to bruise, her helmet making a loud thunk as she bashed into the wall of the tiny enclosed space. She held her breath, waiting for the plunge. The helicopter rocked, then stopped moving, still slightly listing to the side. She couldn’t see it, but she knew that one of the skids had crumbled the edge and was partially dangling off into one of the crevasses. Avantika fought the controls, willing the machine to balance itself on the ledge, it managed a strange hop as it lifted up and landed on the ice.

She panted, breath misting in front of her eyes thick enough to blind her for a second, adrenaline buzzing through her veins.

“The last one!” The guide who’d been coordinating the rescue yelled as he opened the door and the crew shoved in the last bundled figure.

Avantika nodded. She waited for the door to close and then she tried to rise. The skids scraped and the ice moaned like a living thing as the helicopter attempted to take to the air. The engine whined and the propellers whirled as she demanded that the chopper rise, but despite the strain the machine stayed low, skids still rubbing over the top of the ledge.

The air was too thin. She couldn’t take off. Should she try again?

As though in answer, the sun peaked up over the edge of the mountains in the distance, mocking her predicament.

The men on the ground seemed to know exactly what had happened, they were once again running towards the helicopter. Avantika released her restraints and turned around to look for her pack, inside was a thermal suit she could wear until night and an oxygen tank, designed specifically for these kinds of emergencies. After it cooled off in the evening she could attempt another take off. She stared in horror.

Her ready pack was gone. Her suit was gone. It was negative 32 degrees Celsius on the mountain.

She was going to die.

~~

Booker, Nile, and Joe all jerked out of sleep at the same time.

“What was that?” Nile demanded. Her teeth chattered from a cold that only existed in the dream.

“A new one,” Booker gasped.

Joe was already sketching furiously.

Booker scrubbed a hand over his face, “Young. Dark eyes and dark hair. They’re trapped in a snowstorm or a—“

“Blizzard,” Nile interrupted. “Military, but not the US. The name tag had a KC on it.”

“They’re in the Himalayas,” Joe murmured as he continued to work. “The Nepali side.”

Nile and Booker exchanged a look at the mention of the mountain range. For a moment the only sound was the scratch of Joe’s charcoal pencil over paper as Booker took a drag from his flask. When Joe finished he silently held it out for the other two to peer at.

A young man stared up at them from the page, dark thick brows, sharp cheekbones, and serious eyes. He was slender, almost delicate looking, but with a fierce look in dark charcoal eyes with short cropped hair.

“What’s that?” Nile asked, tapping an insignia on the high collar below the young man’s face. It looked like two stubby scimitars forming a cross.

“It’s a kukri, it’s the traditional weapon of the Nepali Gurkhas. You were right, means he’s military,” Joe explained.

“Another military brat,” Booker grunted from where he sat on the edge of a bed.

“You’re one too,” Nile quipped.

Booker held up two hands, palms open and lifted an eyebrow at her, “Aren’t we all?”

“He’s in the mountains,” Joe pointed to a few quick slashes of charcoal that might’ve been peaks he’d drawn behind the young man. “So we just need to find a military group that’s up in one of the mountains, probably a training or rescue operation.”

“He couldn’t die somewhere more hospitable?” Booker muttered.

~~

Anton Agresta, one of the foreign guides for a private climbing company, was the first to spot the huddle of bodies partially tucked under a small rock outcropping between Camp Three and Camp Four. A thick dusting of snow coated the men, making one body indistinguishable from the next.

“I found them!” Anton yelled. There had been eight guides on the mountain when the blizzard hit. One had taken a bone crushing fall leading a client down from the summit, he had been the last one they’d tried to airlift out and failed. Two others had left to search for the lost military troupe and hadn’t returned. After airlifting out three injured clients, the helicopter had nearly slid off into one of the crevasses. The pilot had landed it, but then had vainly attempted to lift off until the sun peaked its way over the ridge.

Anton and the other guides had raced back to the helicopter to unload their fellow guide. He’d been shocked to see a young woman under the pilot’s helmet, she’d asked if they had any extra suits and gear. Anton had sent one of the younger guides back to the tents for a suit. When he returned they’d bundled the pilot up as best as they could, if she could smell the body odor and death on the suit they’d stripped off a dead climber she didn’t mention it. She’d staggered into Camp One with them, four guides carrying their injured comrade and Anton supporting her. She’d starting vomiting from altitude sickness almost immediately after leaving the pressurized interior of the helicopter. Anton prayed that the altitude alone didn’t kill her before she had another chance to attempt another airlift.

The remaining five guides shoved the pilot inside the tent with the injured man, they still had ten men trapped somewhere on the mountain. If they’d survived the night this would be only chance to rescue them. Anton and his group of guides needed to hurry. They drew lots to decide who would stay behind and who would attempt the rescue. That’s how they decided that Anton and two other guides would be headed up the mountain.

Standing over the huddled group of men, Anton started shoveling snow out of the way and searching for faces. None of them were breathing and their vital readouts on their suits were zero, except for one, buried near the bottom of the pile of bodies.

Suddenly, Nam, one of the Sherpa guides, was at his elbow, helping Anton shoulder the half frozen and half comatose man up between them. Tenzing, the other guide, held an oxygen mask over the man’s face.

“Hey man! You gotta help us walk you off this mountain!” Anton yelled, the screaming wind snatching away half of his words.

The unknown man nodded, his face unrecognizable under the glacier glasses, the mask, and the blackened frostbitten skin of his nose and cheeks. He reached for Anton’s shoulder, bracing himself against the taller Dutchman with his forearm. His hands must’ve been destroyed by frostbite after the night spent out in the blizzard.

“One step at a time!” Anton continued to encourage the man. They moved at a glacier pace, it was like escorting one of the walking dead down the mountain.

It was dark by the time they stumbled into Camp One. The wind had picked up, ripping away tents that weren’t properly pitched, flinging them off into an endless oblivion or else down the treacherous Khumbu Icefall. The main tent with most of the supplies was still standing and where the remaining clients would be.

Anton, Nam, and Tenzing groped their way to the medical tent, swinging the beams of their head lamps until they spotted it. The rescued man, their prize, short roped and still doggedly on his feet, in their midst.

Inside was the injured guide and the pilot, two still forms cocooned inside sleeping bags.

“Found one!” Anton gasped triumphantly.

Hall, a gaunt faced guide from New Zealand, looked up from where he crouched next to one of the prone figures, “I’m not sure the pilot’s going to make it. She may have pulmonary edema, she started coughing up bloody sputum about an hour ago. How are we going to get Cristophe off the mountain with a busted leg?”

Anton shook his head, almost too exhausted to process the words. “Tomorrow, let’s wait until tomorrow. Radio CL Base Camp and tell them we have one of the Nepali soldiers.” He checked the name stitched on the man’s suit, “KC Mohammad Yusuf.”

~~

Booker, Nile, and Joe all shivered their way out of sleep.

It took Nile a moment to orient herself, they were on a flight. The lights were dimmed and most passengers around them were sleeping. Right, they were on a flight from Cairo to Kathmandu. There was another one of them, the first in Nile’s experience.

“Was that normal?” she murmured to Booker who was seated next to her. Joe was across the aisle, but wide awake.

“Joe?” Booker asked.

“Hm,” Joe’s dark curly head bobbed side to side a few times. “We dream of each other until we meet, but this one… it felt different. It felt stronger, but at the same time it felt like an echo?” He glanced around quickly before continuing to whisper, “Did you see anything different?”

“Not really,” Booker said after a moment.

“No, but,” Nile paused. “This one felt different than the last one. I felt like I was drowning and it was hard to breath, like icicles stabbing me,” another pause, but after a while Nile also shook her head. “But yeah, I still saw the same person.”

The three of them were silent, all of them reviewing the dream again.

“Whatever’s going on, I think we need to get there as soon as possible,” Nile said.

“The Chomo and Lungma peaks are at least a ten day hike from Kathmandu and a four day drive if the weather allows it. We are hurrying as much as we can,” Booker reminded her.

Nile worried at the edge of her thumbnail. She remembered how confused she’d been when she’d woken up alone in the medical tent after her own dreams. Andy had come to collect Nile by herself and she hadn’t met the others until later. Andy hadn’t offered the gentlest introduction to immortality and now it was Nile’s turn to bring the new one into their group.

Suddenly she felt like that confused and scared 25 year old again, staring down the barrel of a destiny that she had no say in and no escape from. How was she going to talk this new one into joining them?

~~

The blizzard surged up again, pinning the remaining clients and guides down in Camp One. Occasionally aside from the screaming wind they would hear the metallic groans and shrieks of the helicopter, somehow still hanging onto the ledge above the icefall.

The soldier’s hands were completely black from frostbite, as though he’d stuck them inside an incinerator. Anton and the Sherpas had done what they could, after they’d removed his gloves they’d slipped each hand into a gel pack that sealed around the wrist that would gradually warm to body temperature. Hopefully the doctors at Base Camp would be able to save some of his fingers, because a medic needed fingers.

Of the ten Nepali soldiers, it was only their medic who had survived. Anton reviewed the footage from his hood cam, there had only been seven soldiers in that pile of bodies.

Where were the other three and the two missing guides?

Statistically, they’d probably walked off a cliff or tumbled into a crevasse. Anton shuddered, but not from the cold.

Three days later the storm finally quieted.

Anton, now the defacto leader of the survivors, checked on everyone. Despite Hall’s grim prophecy and the odds, the pilot had survived the extreme cold, the altitude, and the blizzard.

“She’s a tough, tiny little thing,” Anton mused aloud as he shook her awake. “Soup? Tea? You have to eat if you want to try to fly out tomorrow morning.”

Avantika nodded and took the offered cup, “I want to check the helicopter today before sunset.”

“Sure, the wind’s died down. We can do almost anything you want,” Anton promised.

Anton left the other guides to tend to the injured and the clients and followed the woman to the helicopter.

“So you and your brother are KC? What’s that short for?” he asked.

“Khatri Chhetri, we’re descendents of the warrior caste in Nepal,” she said as she examined the helicopter’s exterior and propellers. The propellers were frozen in place, she’d have to start the engine to check if they were completely stuck, but with so little fuel she’d wait until they’d loaded everyone to try. She didn’t want to waste what little fuel she had.

The skids of the helicopter were completely frozen into the ledge, when she’d been forced down that first day, the sun had thinned out the air too much for her to take off, but at the same time it’d warmed the metal of the skids enough to sink the machine down into the ice a little. That was why the wind had been unable to hurl it off the mountainside like a petulant child smashing a toy.

“We’re going to have to chip the skids out of the ice,” she told Anton.

It was going to take the two of them the better part of the day to break away the ice from the skids with their ice picks.

“Warrior caste? I didn’t know the Nepali still had castes,” Anton grunted each time his pick smashed into the ice.

“There’s not that many of us left, but we still believe we each hold a warrior’s heart,” Avantika explained. “We save anyone who asks and we fight for what we think is right.”

~~

Her brother was conscious and alive. When Avantika woke up shivering in the tent with the blizzard howling around her, she wanted to triumphantly yell back at the storm that she’d found her brother. That no matter what the mountain hadn’t taken him from her. She’d been insanely sick after leaving the interior of the helicopter, vomiting until she couldn’t see straight and then coughs had wracked her body as her lungs rebelled. Avantika didn’t think she’d ever been that sick in her life before, her vision had swum and she’d passed in and out of consciousness. Yet, she was still alive and so was her brother. It was a moment of triumph and oh, how she wanted to celebrate. But that would’ve been foolish, they were still on the mountain and only an idiot would anger Chomolungma before reaching safety.

Mohammad’s face was black with frostbite, she was afraid to touch it, and his hands were still sealed in the gel packs. One of the male guides had to help him take a piss, thankfully he didn’t need to do anything else since he hadn’t eaten for days.

The Sherpas had prayed the night before Avantika was going to make her final flight to rescue her brother and the injured guide, Cristophe. The remaining guides, clients, and Sherpas were preparing to depart after she either flew or crashed off the mountain.

Avantika sat at the helicopter controls and shivered violently. She’d only managed a few hours of sleep. She was terrified, the fear was thick in her heart and in her throat. She had to strip off the outer suit it was so bulky she couldn’t even fit into the pilot’s seat. The thick climber’s gloves also had to go. So seated at the controls, with the two men loaded into the space behind her, Avantika began powering up the engine. She settled her hands on the controls and gripped them as tightly as she held onto her fear. She was Khatri Chhetri. She reminded herself that a warrior’s heart could feel fear, but it was not controlled by fear.

As the engine let out a growl and helicopter’s propellers spun, the men on the ground gave out a cheer. The ice cracked as the skids pulled up and away, the sound like a gunshot in the quiet predawn darkness. Anton watched as the helicopter lifted up, bobbed its way over to the edge of the ice and then plunged forward. A moment later he could see the lights of the machine wobbling along, feet above the Khumbu Icefall as it skimmed its way down the mountain towards Base Camp. He and everyone gathered on the edge of the camp cheered. Anton let out a final “whoop!” that echoed and followed Avantika and her cargo down the mountainside.

~~

Her hands had literally been frozen to the controls when they landed. The medic team used a spray to try and loosen her skin from the freezing surface, but when Avantika’d pulled her hands away pink patches of skin remained stuck to the controls. The tips of one or two fingers had blackened and started to swell with frostbite. The medic team had sealed her hands into the gel packets and rushed her to the medical tent. There wasn’t much the medics could do at Base Camp, they would have to wait to be flown back to Kathmandu in a larger helicopter along with the other men before X-rays could be performed and surgeries discussed.

She thought her co-pilot, Ravinder, would be there to chastise her for almost dying, but he never appeared. It was a little strange. Avantika dismissed it, he was probably coordinating the flight back to Kathmandu. She smiled to herself, he was probably excited, at last an opportunity to be a hero pilot since she was out of commission.

Mohammad joked they were a matching pair now that her hands were sealed into the same gel packets as his were. They were given their own tent together.

“I didn’t think you would come for me,” he finally admitted when they were alone, lying side by side on their makeshift cots.

“Pfft. Who else would they send? I’m the best rescue pilot they have,” she shifted up on the cot and propped herself up on her elbows, so she could look at her brother. “Although this time it had to be my baby brother who was in trouble.”

He sighed, “Sorry, Vanti. I will always be your princess in distress.”

They stared at each other as the silence stretched.

“Vanti, I thought I was going to die,” Mo whispered, his voice thick with tears.

Immediately, Avantika scooted off her cot and slid in beside her brother, brushing away his tears with the edge of her sleeve. “Shhh,” she cradled his head and he shifted his shoulders until his head was pillowed against her hip.

“The worst thought was that I’d never see you again,” he continued in that whisper. “That you would be alone in this world.”

Avantika stroked his hair awkwardly back from his forehead with her wrist, the gel packet making loud crinkling noises, “But here we are. Together. Like always,” she reassured him.

They were quiet for another few minutes. Avantika wondered if Mohammad had fallen asleep he was so quiet.

But then he asked, “You know, the strange thing was that first night on Chomo when I thought I was going to die I had a strange dream. I dreamed of four people, two men and two women—“

Shocked, Avantika interrupted him, “A white man and a black woman? Then a curly dark haired man and an East Asian looking woman?”

“Yeah,” he raised himself up off her lap and stared at his sister. “How did you know?”

“Because I dreamed of them too, that first night on the mountain,” she murmured.

“Do you think—“ Mohammad didn’t get to finish his question.

Suddenly there was noise outside of their tent and the entrance flapped open, the cold wind pouring in. The cold was as shocking as suddenly seeing dreams in real life as two men stood in the open flap of the tent.

“Fuck, you’re shitting me!” the white man exclaimed.

“Twins?” the other man whispered.

~~

Booker was right. It was a four day drive to the Chomo-Lungma Base Camp.

Booker was also the first one to start vomiting from altitude sickness. Nile was suffering headaches from the altitude but she took over driving. Joe was unreliable.

Nile flicked the occasional look at Joe in the passenger seat. Since they’d landed in Kathmandu Joe had seemed… distracted to say the least. No matter what, he’d unerringly turned his face towards the Himalayas, staring glassily off into the distance. Nile couldn’t read his expression, the thoughts and memories inside his mind too deep and private for them to surface, but she still tried. The last time they’d been in the Himalayas they’d been in Tibet, stumbling and herding a half-frozen group of escaped victims of sex traffickers. That mission was the most helpless Nile had felt in decades.

They arrived at CL Base Camp in the dark, ditching the car before the last rise of the icy road, and hoofing it into the tent city the rest of the way.

The hospital tents were in a neat little yellow row with red crosses on the sides. Nile checked each of the charts hung outside of the entrance searching until she got to the third tent and saw:

_  
KC. A.  
KC. M.  
_

Nile covered Booker and Joe as they unzipped the flap and stepped inside. She heard Booker cursing and a muttered word from Joe.

“What’s wrong?” she hissed.

There was the sound of a scuffle from inside the tent then Booker and Joe reappeared with two forms slung over their shoulders.

“Let’s go,” Booker growled.

“Book!” Nile whispered in confusion. Why two?

“I’ll explain when we get to the car,” he said and then he was off, creeping through the tent city.

When they reached the car Nile didn’t need an explanation. She could see the problem. Nile was staring down at two identical twins, at least they looked identical as far as she could tell since they were still swaddled in thermal gear.

“Which one is it?” Booker asked, his eyes flickering back and forth between the two unconscious siblings.

“Easy,” Nile said, as she started to pull one of the gel packets off. The hand she revealed was black with frostbite, but when she gave it a hard rub the swollen dead skin split open and sloughed off like a second glove. “This one.”

“Wait a minute, Nile,” Booker held up the hand of the other twin, which had also split under similar ministrations and revealed perfectly healed fingertips under the frostbite.

Cursing softly Nile pulled off the other gel pack and glove of dead skin. She briskly rubbed at the necrotic skin, flaking it off the unconscious man’s face, “I think we need to leave. We can take both of them and figure this out later.”

“Sure,” Booker shoved the twin nearest him further into the backseat to make room for himself. “Joe!”

Nile turned around to see Joe staring blankly off towards the mountain again, his mind a million miles or centuries away. She grabbed him and yanked him towards the car. He obediently allowed himself to be pushed and buckled into the front seat.

This was a mess.

~~

“It explains the second dream,” someone was speaking. “One must’ve died first and then the second one died the next night.”

“It doesn’t explain why now,” a woman said.

“There’s never an answer when you ask why. Andy asked that for years and she never got a response, maybe she knows now but that doesn’t help us much. She asked the same thing when you came along, Nile.” Mohammad was pressed against Avantika’s side and the man was on the other side of her brother, who was still unconscious as far as she could tell. She was pressed up against the car door on the other side, she could jump out but how far would she get? And could she leave Mo behind? So Avantika kept her eyes closed and continued to breathe evenly.

“How’s Joe?” the man asked.

“He’s asleep, but I don’t know,” the woman’s voice was filled with worry. “It was a mistake to bring him. We should’ve sent him back to Quynh.”

“We didn’t know, Nile. You didn’t know. We couldn’t know,” the man paused. “I think one of them is awake.”

She was busted. Avantika’s eyes popped open, “Who are you people?”

“Yup,” the man on the other side of Mo said. “I think we need to stop the car, Nile.”

~~

“You’re crazy!” Avantika said. “This isn’t a fairy tale!”

“You know how Andy convinced me it was real? She shot me! In the head!” Nile yelled back, frustrated beyond all belief. This was not going according to plan.

“Should I?” asked Booker.

“No!” Nile yelled. “No one is shooting anyone in the head.” She ground the heels of her hands into her eyes and growled.

“Avantika,” Mo said quietly in Nepali. _“I believe them.”_

 _“What? Why?”_ she demanded, switching to their mother tongue.

“ _Well…. Look,_ ” he held out his hands, which were free of any frostbite. Then he flicked out a small switchblade and sliced the palm of his hand, they both stared as it healed over.

“ _That doesn’t mean we have to join them_ ,” Avantika protested. “ _We could go back. We have a life here! I’ve worked so hard. You’ve worked so hard! Are we just going to walk away from everything we’ve worked for?_ ”

“ _You can rebuild_ ,” a new voice chimed in. “ _Make something better._ ”

The twins gaped at the dark haired man. He spoke Nepali?

“ _Sorry, practice is needed for me,_ ” he explained, his accent odd and ancient. “ _When I last spoke Nepali it was before called Gorkhali._ ”

“ _Gorkhali? The Kingdom of Gorkha?_ ” Avantika stared. The Gorkha had fallen in 1768, the language had later been renamed but no one had used the term Gorkhali for at least 400 years.

“English, guys? Nile and I are feeling left out,” Booker sat perched in the back seat of the car with the door open, facing out from the vehicle.

“He speaks Gorkhali! He speaks a four hundred year old language!” It was simply one more thing on the list of things Avantika didn’t want to believe. She didn’t want to believe she’d died four days ago in her sleep, the first night on the mountain, from either the cold or altitude sickness. She didn’t want to believe that her brother had died on the mountain and resurrected under a pile of corpses.

“Joe probably speaks more languages than all of us combined. He’s been around since the Crusades,” Booker shrugged.

“Quynh’s older,” Nile added.

“How old is she?” Mo asked. He didn’t seem as shocked as his sister, in fact, he seemed almost too calm.

“We’re not really sure. We know she’s less than 6000 years old, but that’s all she’ll tell us,” Nile seemed to consider something for a moment. “Come with us. We’ll introduce you to all of us and we can show you what we do. After that, if you want to come back, we’ll fix your AWOL status.” Booker and Joe both gave her a worried look. “I promise. Just come and have a look.”

“So what exactly, do you guys do?” Avantika asked.

“We save people, help where we can, and we fight for what we think is right,” Nile told them.

The twins exchanged a look, their father used to tell them nearly the same thing as children: “ _We are Khatri Chhetri. We help those who ask for it and we fight for what we believe is right, because we have a true warrior’s heart._ ”

Nile, Booker, and Joe waited.

The silence stretched. Nile watched as Avantika and Mohammad exchanged an entire conversation in looks. Some supernatural ability twins seemed to have. The freezing wind gusted around the five still figures as even the silence shivered and waited.

“Okay,” Avantika’s voice shattered the tense moment, “We’ll go see.”

“Great, let’s get back in the car where we can get warm,” Booker grumbled.

~~

They drove the six days into Uttar Pradesh where they met with Quynh’s contact in Lucknow. They would be flying out on a cargo freighter bound for London, but making a stop in Prague. That’s where they’d be getting off.

Nile and Booker were the talkers, at least, they tried to hold a conversation with the twins, if Booker’s grunts and complaints could be categorized as conversation. After the few words in Nepali, Joe had fallen silent again. They were on board the flight headed for Prague. The four of them sat huddled together and Joe sat off to the side, facing east as they left Nepal behind. After sharing their own stories, Nile and Booker shared stories about Andy and Quynh.

“Andy was a baklava connoisseur. Nothing got past her,” Booker was saying. “I think the only time I’ve ever seen her temporarily stumped was when Nile brought that stuff from Hawaii.”

“Oh yeah, I thought she was going to bury me! _‘Who puts macadamia nuts in baklava?!’_ ” Nile mimicked the shock and outrage Andy had expressed at that moment. “Hey, I hadn’t committed the cardinal sin! I’d just bought the damn stuff. Thought it would be funny,” she offered a single shoulder shrug and smiled at the memory.

“So,” Avantika jerked her chin over at Joe. “What’s his story?”

Nile and Booker exchanged a look then they both glanced over their shoulders at Joe.

“Well, you did mention the Crusades,” Vanti started, attempting to start the conversation on Joe.

“But what’s wrong with him?” Mo finished.

“Joe… lost someone,” Nile started carefully.

“And he’s been like that, half dead and not really alive, since,” Booker added, taking a drink from his ever present flask.

It was the twins’ turn to exchange a look. How did a man live with his grief for a millennia? Or even just a few centuries?

There was genuine anguish in Booker’s eyes as he continued, “Nicky was like us. He died two hundred years ago.”


End file.
